"Then the wounded began to come back. Some wrecked forever, others soon to be no more, all flushed with excitement, but glad to be at last out of that awful hell." (Letter to his sister, December 9, 1917)

Eugene A. Curtin

Newsclipping: "Gives Graphic Glimpse of War on Western Front" December 28, 1917.

Many American physicians who served in World War I, like Eugene Curtin, shipped out to Europe sooner than their comrades in arms. The British government, whose army medical corps had been decimated by nearly three years of fighting, aggressively recruited American doctors to be attached to the British Army. Curtin’s correspondence with his family and friends painted contrasting pictures of his hosts in England (cold, distant) and France (grateful, gracious). Working close to the front in France, he was appalled by what he saw. “They speak of the grandeur of war,” he wrote. “There is no such thing; it’s just a deadly, sickening, bloody slaughter.”